Kanan’s had an incredibly successful career stretching back decades, not just in daytime, but also primetime and film. A lot of folks, though, might consider his role as the villainous Mike Barnes in The Karate Kid: Part III as the biggest thing in his career. And “in many ways it is,” Kanan admitted to Hall, “but not for the reasons that people think. Because at 22 when I was suddenly faced with my mortality, I was able to uncover a part of my character that I didn’t know existed.”

The problems started when Kanan put a little too much into stunts while filming Karate Kid, injuring himself and causing internal bleeding that, over the course days, continued to grow worse until he passed out. He was rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery and it was definitely scary, he shared.

His parents, out on the East Coast as he underwent life-saving surgery in Las Angeles, could only get one ticket out to see him. His dad came first and after passing out and going through emergency surgery, Kanan woke up in the recovery room with a “15 inch wound on my abdomen with staples. And I saw my poor father sitting in a chair and he was just gray. I, in retrospect, was just thinking about what it must have been like for my dad to be flying across the country knowing his kid’s in emergency surgery, not knowing if he’s gonna make it.”

But it was what happened next that really shook him — and pushed him to heights he never thought possible. Because he wasn’t greeted with sympathy by the studio. Karate Kid was still filming and director John Avildsen wasn’t waiting around. “I basically was told, ‘Get back to set within two weeks or we’re gonna fire you and recast,’” Kanan recalled.  “Initially I was really angry. I was angry at the universe. I was angry at how I was being treated by the studio. There were no balloons, there were no flowers. And an interesting thing happened pretty quickly. That anger became my why and that why got me out of bed the first day.”

He started out walking to the bathroom. Then he walked around the hospital hallway. “And by the fourth or fifth day,” he recalled, “I had them discharge me against medical advice. I recuperated for, I think about a week, and I started working out with a guy who was a lineman for the Rams when they were in Los Angeles all those years ago in the eighties. And long story short, I wound up doing all of my own martial arts stunts” for the movie.

Ultimately, he noted, “I was able to uncover a part of my character that I didn’t know existed, and it sort of taught me a little about myself. It was a really good lesson.” Check out the full interview below.

As horrible as that traumatic experience was, we can’t help wondering how much of Kanan’s life has been shaped by it. And by his determination to push through and keep going. Would we have gotten Deacon, if he hadn’t defied the odds to get back out there? Would we have had General Hospital‘s AJ?

Sometimes, the most horrible of experiences can lead us to greater heights than we thought possible. We’re just glad that Kanan came out of his near-death experience not just surviving, but thriving.